Potter Springs (30 page)

“Good.” Dale nodded, as if satisfied. Like he’d done the work himself, or at least commissioned the others. “Listen.” Tugging
Mark’s elbow, the deacon led him closer to the house. “Ervin and I had a little talk. I’ve got something for you, on behalf
of the board.”

“Yes?” Mark hated Dale tugging him anywhere.

Dale handed over an envelope, then stuck his thumbs in his jeans pockets.

For an instant, Mark feared the worst, opening it in front of others. A crazy thought that Ervin had changed his mind. Humiliation
to go.
You’re fired. Have fun in Mexico. God bless and Godspeed.

Instead, it was a neat stack of cash. God bless, indeed.

“Traveling money.” Dale bowed his chest out, his strong nose shining in the afternoon sun. “It’s from the special-needs fund.
And we figured if ever there was a special need, well, you might just qualify.”

The board chairman grinned, and for the first time, Mark saw his humanity.

“Thanks.” Mark shook Dale’s hand. On instinct, he added, “Hey, Dale, let me ask you something. You know how swamped Ervin
is. While I’m gone, we’ll need your help to hold down the fort. What do you say?”

“Absolutely.” Dale nodded vigorously before Mark finished talking. “You have my full support.”

The man seemed to grow two inches, stacked boots or not. “Great. When I get back, we can talk about putting you over some
of my responsibilities, if you’d like.”

A glint in Dale’s eye told Mark he’d struck gold.

“Things like next year’s carnival. Organizing committees. Building our finances.”
Busywork,
Mark thought to himself.
My headaches, Dale’s specialty.

The man was nearly aquiver with excitement. Dale the Watch-dog, sniffing out injustice and ineptitude, on behalf of Mark Reynolds.
“You can count on me.”

Joe Don rambled up, his legs bowed out like a wishbone. “Seen the Weather Channel anytime today?”

“Nope,” Mark said. “Don’t have cable.”

“Looks like a storm’s rolling in down south. One of those tropical depressions, set to hit the Mexican coast in a coupla days.
Might be nothing, but it could get ugly.”

“I’ll be careful,” Mark promised.

“That cat don’t look too happy,” Ervin noted. He scratched behind Mr. Chesters’s ears, flattened through the square grid of
the cage. The animal quit moaning for the briefest of seconds.

“It never does,” Mark agreed, sliding behind the wheel.

“Got everything you need?”

“Yep.” Mark met Ervin’s gaze. “Thanks for the money.”

“What money?” Ervin grinned and slapped the Toyota’s hood. “You best get going. Daylights a-burnin’!”

Mark honked the horn, an absurd chirpy sound, and left them waving in his yard.

HE DID NOT
, it turned out, have everything he needed. When he pulled into the motel parking lot, he realized by Mr. Chesters’s increasing
screams that he’d left the cat food next to the dryer in the garage. The special diet food for heinously cranky cats on their
last feline lives.

The motel sign blinked a neon vacancy, and Mark stepped into the lobby.

A gum-smacking girl worked the counter, her eyes blackened under layers of eyeliner. She didn’t look up from her magazine.

“The sign says you have a vacancy?”

No answer.

“Could I get a room, please?”

“How many?” She stood, boredom battling irritation for control of her facial muscles.

“Just one room.”

She looked at him as if he were the stupidest person walking the planet. “How many
people?”
Her tongue piercing, a miniature dumbbell, dulled her speech.

“Oh. One. Plus a cat.”

She sat down again, propping a combat boot on a footstool. “No animals.”

“He’s in a carrier. I won’t let him out.”

“No animals,”
she repeated, snapping her gum.

“What if I leave him in the car?”

She arched a penciled brow at him, still reading.

“Thanks for all your help.” The bell jingled overhead. He heard Mr. Chesters before he opened the car door, and then the yowls
and the piercing stench of urine hit him all at once. The cat had sprayed the inside of his cage. Again.

“Fifty more miles, buddy,” he informed Mr. Chesters after checking the map. “And you better pray they have a motel, a Wal-Mart
and a hose.”

An hour later, Mark crouched in the gas station parking lot, hosing out the plastic carrier. One thin strip of neon illuminated
Gary’s Gas station and a
CLOSED
sign hung on the glass door. Silence reigned in the residential area around the station. Little houses, with rickety porches
like loosened teeth, slept in the midnight hour.

When Mark finished, he released the cat from the backseat, where he’d curled into a baseball shape on top of Mark’s bag. “Let’s
go, buddy.” He scooted the furry mass out the door.

“Mraaawl!”
Mr. Chesters took a deep bite from the fleshy part of Mark’s left hand and pranced off to a nearby plot of grass.

“You ungrateful, godforsaken pile of…” Mark dug for Missy’s wipies. Wrapping one around his hand, he shouted at the cat, still
picking its way among the green blades. “Now’s the time,” Mark ordered. “Not in the cage, not in the motel.”

Mr. Chesters mewled again. His yellow eyes reflected the neon sign.

“It’s fine, see.” Mark got down on his hands and knees, tapping the grass like the hair of a good child. “It’s a great place
to go.”

Mr. Chesters squared his hind legs and lowered himself.

“Good boy,” Mark whispered, afraid of interrupting nature, yet sensing a gentle encouragement couldn’t hurt. “That’s a good
boy.”

At the last second, the cat, instead of eliminating, leaped forward with all the force of his hind legs. Away from Mark’s
reach and toward the back of the garage, where piles of tires had been stacked to the station’s roof. The cat’s tail snaked
through black rubber, then waved a saucy good-bye and disappeared.

“Mr. Chesters?” Mark whispered, unbelieving. Abandoned by a cat. Alone in a town with no Wal-Mart and a closed gas station-and
miles and miles away from Amanda.

He was tempted to leave the animal, to fend for himself at Gary’s Gas.

Take care of Mr. Chesters for me,
Amanda had said. One of the last things she’d asked of him.

So, by all that was holy, he would. All the way to Mexico. “Mr. Chesters?” he called again, this time louder. He glanced at
the houses, weighing safety against anger. He let his frustration rip.

“Mr. Chesters!” He shouted at the maze of tires, creeping toward the pile. “Heeeere, kitty, kitty.”

His voice sounded less like a loving pet owner and more like Jack Nicholson in
The Shining.

The tires shifted. The tower nearest Mark leaned to the left and he shoved it back. Too hard, unsettling a high-rise of hubcaps.
The stacked wheels danced like a tin man, scraping and wiggling, then, in a shower of metal, clattered to the ground. But
not before one particularly mobile piece bounced off rubber and hit him in the forehead.

The ensuing noise made a rebel symphony, with metallic pitches high and low and Mark’s furious shouts added to the mix.

“Mr. Chesters!” he bellowed, bracing the head wound with his palm.

The cat raced from the tires into a field behind Gary’s Gas. He darted past a clump of shrubs and out of sight.

“Mr. Chesters,
come here!”

At a house nearest the station, a porch light blared on. The front door flew open, and Mark heard the unmistakable sound of
a shotgun, cocked and ready.

The gun’s bearer could have been an extra from
Deliverance.
“I don’t know no Mr. Chesters, but you best quit that racket or I’ll quit it for you.”

M
arianne giggled as she tripped on the edge of the thick carpet. “Watch out, Mandy, that one’s tricky!”

“Got it.” Still in the doorway, Amanda brushed sand from her legs and tightened her sarong.

“Ohhh, there’s a bar!” Marianne whipped around, her grasp on a melted margarita tenuous at best. She pointed, as if Amanda
couldn’t spot the crowded area for herself.

The lobby looked like a carnival, full of spandex, sounds and languages. People danced and talked and laughed. Some dressed
for the evening, others simply wore cover-ups and shiny tans. The spirit of the beach had blown indoors for the evening.

“You know what I wanna do? One of those drinks in a little glass!” Marianne pointed to a low table next to the door, where
a group of sunburned Europeans stacked their empties and roared at one another over the din of the cover band onstage.

“Tequila? You want a tequila shot?” Amazement raised Amanda’s voice. What had started with a few innocent margaritas had taken
a decided turn for the worse. “I’m not sure you should have any more to drink.”

“Nonsense”-Marianne huffed-“I’m a grown woman, and I’d like to have a shot of tequila!” She shuffled to the bar, skirting
the dancers on the edge of the parquet floor, leaving Amanda no choice but to follow.

Marianne straddled a high stool and plopped the orange hat next to her. “Yoo-hoo! Bartender! Tequila,
por favor!”
She flapped a hand in the air.

He nodded and turned to pour the shot.

“Look at the buns on that bartender,” she whispered.

“Shhh.”
Amanda retied her mother-in-law’s cover-up, where it threatened to slip away. “It’s getting late, let’s go.”

“Oh, pooh. Don’t be a spoilsport.” Flashing a wicked grin, Marianne launched into a singsong,
“Bartender buns, bartender buns, bartender buns?”

Expressionless, the man handed the drink over and waited for the signature. Amanda mouthed, “Sorry,” and sank into the nearest
chair.

On the other side of them perched a woman with leathery skin, stuffed in a sequined catsuit. The bartender placed a shot in
front of her.

Marianne tapped the lady. “How do you do this?”

“You lick the salt, take the shot, then suck on the lime.” The woman showed her, with the panache of a seasoned professional.

“Oh, how nice! You did that just beautifully,” Marianne complimented. “Let’s see.” It took her twice as long, movements awkward
and slow. Her eyes widened as each taste set in. She slammed the glass down and grinned. “I did it!”

Catsuit woman lifted her refilled glass in salute.

Marianne spun on the bar stool and clapped to the music. The bunny hop. “You’ll watch these for us, won’t you?” She pushed
their beach bags closer to their bar companion.

“I ain’t going nowhere.”

“Thanks!” Cramming her hat on with a flourish, she grabbed Amanda’s hand, with a grip suddenly like steel. “Come with me,
o daughter of mine.”

“Oh no. No way. I am not doing the bunny hop.”

“Oh yes, you are….”

The chain wriggled through the lobby like a reeling Tilt-A-Whirl. Amanda found herself shoved in line and mercilessly pushed
forward with a stranger’s heavy mitts on her shoulders. She lost her mother-in-law in the mix and looked for her in the crowd
at the song’s end.

“How about the Cotton-Eyed Joe!” A perky voice yelled at the band. On the other side of the room, Marianne hopped up and down,
waving. “We’re from Texas! Play the Cotton-Eyed Joe!”

The band obliged and Amanda slipped back to the bar, hiding as she watched the proceedings unfold.

Marianne taught other dancers the simple steps, her hat flopped over her eyes. It fell off in the shuffle and got stepped
on. When the song’s stomps and yells subsided, someone sailed the hat like a distorted Frisbee and it landed in a nearby palm.

“This one’s for our friends from Texas!” The dulcet tune of “Blue Bayou” poured out as the revelers crept to their seats or
found partners. Not exactly a Texas song, but close enough.

A tall, dark man asked Marianne to dance and she clung to his shoulders as they swayed across the floor.

“I’m going back someday, come what may
…”

Amanda thought of Doyle, who never came back again. And of Mark. When would he be ready? She didn’t think she could last much
longer. She ached with the longing, her heart rose and fell with the music. Mourning for what was lost, hoping for the future.

I’m coming home, Mark. Come what may.

When the couple turned, silver streaks wet her mother-in-law’s cheeks.

Amanda retrieved the crumpled hat from the palm tree, and approached when the song finished. “I’m a little tired. What do
you say we head back to our rooms?”

“Tired.” She nodded, her face slack as a sleeping child’s. “Back to the rooms.”

“Thanks for the dance.” The man smiled kindly.

They made it to the elevators, where Marianne leaned against the wall with her eyes closed.

Digging through the fuchsia carryall, Amanda found the room key. Inside, the dark room smelled of fresh sheets and the ocean.
She clicked on the bathroom light. Toiletries lined up in precise circles. Illumination hit the open closet, where shoes sat
in rows with aligned heels. Clothes hung on equidistant hangers.